A good wreath or garland has a bit of give to it when you touch it, branches that spring back instead of staying flat where you squeezed them, and a weight that feels like something cut rather than something stamped out of a mold. Switch on a string of lights and you want a warm, steady glow, not a flicker that makes the room look like it's having a seizure. The best seasonal pieces have a kind of presence even before anyone notices them, the way a lit garland on a mantel changes the whole feel of a room walking in from the cold.
None of this stuff is built for daily life, and that's fine, that's the point. A feather garland or a tinsel curtain has no business in a house with a cat who treats string as a personal challenge, and anything battery powered with exposed wiring is the wrong call in a kid's room no matter how good it looks in the box. Where this does its best work is in the ordinary spots people already have, a mantel over a gas fireplace, a front door that gets walked past fifty times a day, a stair rail, a plain dining table that needs something other than the same runner it wears all year. It sits well against things people already own, a plain wood table, a beige sofa, white walls that have nothing going on, because the decoration is supposed to be the only loud thing in the room, not competing with a patterned rug for attention.
The difference between a wreath that makes it to a second Christmas and one that's in the trash by New Year's usually comes down to the base. A wire or wood frame holds its shape, foam crumbles. Real or well made faux foliage has some weight and color variation to it, the cheap stuff is one flat shade of green that looks like a tennis ball. Garlands with a proper core, wire or rope rather than thin plastic, drape instead of kinking at odd angles. On lights, check the cord itself, not just the bulbs, a stiff cord that won't lie flat is going to fight you every single year you put it up.
Give any of this a few years and it gets better in a strange way, a little duller, a little softer at the edges, and somehow more like it belongs to your house specifically rather than a box from a store. The cheap stuff just looks tired. The good stuff looks like a decoration that's been hung every year on purpose.